Its not the size that counts....

[Tosiek12 0]

So, every city I was able to see before they turned off the global viewing of peoples cities was this this big block of city taking up every inch of space on a map.  And from everything i've seen everyone goes that direction so wanted to give some advice to everyone.

 

Its not about filling the map, its about getting what you need and keeping it simple.  Those few simple cities specializing in specific areas are what makes a great region and allows you to build that one or two major population cities.  Its actually the only way you can build a high pop city without it crashing. 

 

The map size is just too small to support populations over 150k and have a specialization and all the required services to keep the city running.  Take care of one or two things on the map, like low wealth residential and maybe mine some ore and then move to another city.  Maybe produce a high wealth city with a bunch of water pumps or clean electric. 

 

The reason I say this is because i've had huge success in my cities by just keeping my populations from 40-75k ish.  Cities are completely stable at that size and your making 8-15k profit an hour, well if your playing right anyways.  This gives you the freedom to build any support systems for your big cities your planning or other cities where you can't fit all of the support services.  If your planning on doing oil, building out max res, taking care of proper industrial and commercial then your gonna fail with your town after 6+ hours. Your not going to have enough room to support the population and services with the amount of space you need for everything.  Its just impossible long term and ends up making the bugs especially prominent. 

 

Anyways, I've been outsourcing a ton of stuff to other specialty cities in my region.  I like the region that has 7 cities all linked together, Reflection Atoll.  This is probably the best map to play if your doing it solo or the one with 5 cities, whitewater, but that one has two groups of cities not connected by rail.  The 16 city maps are broken into 4 city groups that aren't connected aside from boats meaning you can't trade anything really to the other 12 cities on the map.  Actually, the more I think about it, the 5 and 7 city maps are probably better for multiplayer as well aside from the loss of the great sites spots. 

 

Just because your given a specific box to fill up doesn't mean you need to completely fill it to "win" the game.  Plus not having a bunch of perfectly square skyscraper cities in your region does look more natural.

 

Hope this helped.  Went through some long city building sessions today and half way through I've changed and been hugely successful going this route. 

[Catchin22 299]

There's so many ways to play this game. See my review here:

 

I had 240k and my specialization was making Electronics. I run that city now 65k in the red but my investments make me ATM around 100k a month. Depending on how I configure things, I can make over 2m a month.

[stringerbell 9]

I think most people realize that there is (or at least there is supposed to be) more to a sim city game than cramming as much stuff into the map as possible.

 

The problem is that the map is so unbelievably small in this game that if you dont do this, you end up with 'cities' that are basically one or two main roads and some type of specialization. That's why everyone just ends up cramming the map. I agree it's lame and uncreative, but there's not much room for creativity once you've run through all the specializations

[behedwin 3]

i really like that kind of thinking...

in the old sc it was a no brainer to build a large city and the goal was to go from low density to high.

 

but in this one it is not that obvious that you need to do that.

 

the area is small...

 

i think we need to build really specialized in each city.

one trade city

one casino city

one oil and/or coal city

use the city best suited to pump allot of wate

connect everything with train, boats, cars, etc.

 

but

can this be done alone

i have tried to load one city, build some zones

load another and do the same

try to build along side severl citys that are helping each other.

 

but i cant get it to work

thats why i think the game is unplayable in the terms of its full purpose... sure i play allot and i have fun.

 

this will even be more fun in multiplayer when several ppl do this.

 

but it need to work first

[macvirt 361]

Size always matters. I'm not even referring to the obvious pun, it is an integral element of human thinking. Entire cultures are built upon the conceptualisation of bigger is better. Ever seen us Americans doing the rounds as a tourist? Awesome, that Tower Bridge, it's old. Our bridges are bigger man. And I'm not even dwelling on the psychological here. Artificial constraints never go well with the human psyche.